Watch his beautiful, compact body as it pirouettes or pretzels in tortured permutations or, even more elegantly, stands in repose as everything goes crazy around it. Watch his mind as it contemplates a hostile universe whose violent whims Buster understands, withstands and, miraculously, tames. Watch his camera taking his picture (Keaton directed or supervised all his best films); it is as cool as the star it captured in its glass... The medium was still in its infancy; comics were pioneering the craft of making people laugh at moving images. Keaton, it turns out, knew it all - intuitively.

I just want that one day, when I retire, that people still remember me like they remember Buster. I really want someone to respect me the way they respect Bust…

There are moments in many of his movies that are just poetic... In doing silent movies, no one had done this yet!

What a creative genius - what an inventor... A guy like that, you just sit back and say, okay, I'll never get there!

People come up to me and say 'Steve, what is film editing?' And I say 'How should I know? You're the director.'

For me the filmmaker Bergman is the greatest actor of all. His vision and his filmic force, the thing that the Frenchmen call auteur. What Kurosawa and Fellini…

Never look at the Trombones, you'll only encourage them.